In many industries, workers are tasked with operating multiple pieces of equipment (e.g., electromechanical machines or robotics) at any given time in order to complete multiple different tasks or projects. While primarily automated, these pieces of equipment or devices often require at least some human intervention in order to complete a given task or project. For example, a user may need to interface with the semi-automatic device in order to instruct the device to begin the task or project, to intervene where, for example, consumable supplies associated with the device need replenished and/or a fault condition requiring attention has occurred, and/or simply to perform some portion of the task or project that the device cannot handle on its own. One such industry may, for example, be the pharmaceutical dispensing industry, wherein pharmacy technicians use semi-automated medication storing, dispensing and packaging devices, located within a hospital or an external pharmacy, to fill daily, weekly, monthly and/or one-time prescriptions for multiple patients.
While some of the tasks may require that the user physically interface with the device, many do not. However, current systems typically require that the user physically “visit” a piece of equipment in order to provide any instruction to the device and/or perform any task in relation to the device (e.g., to know if work is waiting to be performed, consumable supplies need replenished, and/or if a fault condition requiring attention has occurred). A consequence of this requirement is that a significant amount of unnecessary time and motion is expended in performance of tasks or projects in relation to the semi-automatic devices; thus resulting in built-in inefficiencies associated with completion of the tasks.
In addition to the foregoing, as noted above, a user may be tasked with completing multiple different tasks or projects within a given time period. In many cases certain tasks or actions arising in relation to these projects require more immediate attention than other such tasks or actions. In addition, it may be beneficial to give certain projects, or tasks within that project, priority over other tasks or projects in order to more efficiently complete all of the projects for which the user is responsible. It may be very difficult for users to process all of the factors that go into determining which task or action should be performed at what time and in what order in order to ensure that all projects are completed in a timely fashion.
A need, therefore, exists not only for a way in which users can remotely interact with and control the processing tasks of multiple pieces of equipment, but also for a way in which tasks and/or projects associated with the pieces of equipment can be prioritized and automatically provided to the user, such that the user need not keep track of every task to be performed and its relation to other tasks to be performed.